The purpose of this project is to assist an experienced faculty member in psychiatric nursing to develop as a resource to the Medical College of Georgia in child and adolescent mental health research. The proposal for two additional years of funding builds on a currently funded three year Child and Adolescent Academic Award. A two-year sequence of interdisciplinary activities has been planned to continue guiding the nominee toward gaining expertise as an investigator in child and adolescent mental health, as a teacher and supervisor of other investigators, and as a resource to other clinical teachers and researchers in the academic setting. The proposed plan includes mentoring by experts in child and adolescent mental health research, structural equation modeling, growth modeling, self-concept research, children of depressed mothers, and developmental psychopathology. Activities include attendance at interdisciplinary research seminars, consultation and directed readings in statistics and research methodology, supervised clinical activities, and collaboration on studies testing hypotheses derived from a transactional model of self-concept and self-esteem development in children. The model will be examined in two studies. Data will be collected from high school seniors who had participated in a longitudinal study of rural elementary and middle school students. The longitudinal data will be used to predict adolescents' levels of self-esteem from their own behavioral problems, and their relations with peers, and to examine rates of change in the variables over time. Data from a study of children whose mothers were clinically depressed will be used to examine the effects of mother-child communications, and the children's social information processing skills on children's self-esteem. Plans for post-award activities include developing a research program focusing on the mental health of youth in rural areas, including interventions to enhance self-esteem. The proposed interdisciplinary activities will be supported by contractual arrangements between the applicant institution and the University of Georgia. These arrangements will allow the nominee to continue to collaborate with experts at the interdisciplinary Institute for Behavioral Research, on research projects related to child and adolescent mental health.